Slit Ass Birch Ho: The sad tale of a nice guy thwarted

And that is just the beginning of a wondrous little exchange between a self-described “nice guy” trying out some bad boy charm on a not-very receptive woman on OkCupid who nonetheless deals with his ridiculous assholery with aplomb.

Note to “nice guy.” You might want to reconsider some of your assumptions. And work on your typing.

I found this on the endlessly fascinating, if often deeply disturbing, CreepyPMs subreddit, one of Reddit’s few redeeming features. You can read the rest of the conversation here, and the CreepyPM post here.

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About David Futrelle

I run the blog We Hunted the Mammoth, which tracks (and mocks) online misogyny.
My writing has appeared in a wide variety of places, including Salon, Time.com, the Washington Post, the New York Times Book Review and Money magazine.
I like cats.

The “think of the men on the autism spectrum” (but not the women, who cares about them?) thing is such an obvious piece of bullshit. I’ve worked in the tech industry, with lots of guys who were at various points on the spectrum. Were they awkward as hell sometimes? Did some of them talk at me repeatedly about a random thing I knew nothing about without noticing that I didn’t seem to be interested in that thing? Sure. Did they send me creepy messages on the internet? No, because they were not creeps. Did they suggest that if I didn’t want to be harassed I’d delete my social media presence? No, because that’s fucking ridiculous.

Over the course of years in that environment I was never been sexually harassed by someone who was obviously on the spectrum (or who I knew was because they’d told me). It was the sleazy sales guys with excellent social skills and no moral compass who were the problem.

It’s the same old, isn’t it: men who want to harass women (or worse) will seize anything to make themselves and other harassers the innocent, deprived ones and/or the ones seeking justice against women’s outrageous denial of vagina access. One day it’s “but he’s on the spectrum!” next it’s “women only like arseholes!” And of course women are always to blame, whether we follow social conditioning to Be Nice To Men and put with it/don’t round on them for fear of the consequences, or we do tell them to go fuck a cactus.

It comes back to the whole tautology of it. How do we know the person is “in the spectrum”, answer = they do creepy behaviour. Why does that person do creepy behaviour, answer = “because they’re ‘in the spectrum'”.

Nope, people can be arseholes for whatever reason. If they happen to be in one group and not another, that’s an accident.

The nasty, unhelpful undertones of all this is not just that “he can’t help it” but it’s fucking enabling because he will *never* be expected to “help it” in this dumbarse model of human cognitive functioning.

Part of the reason this annoys me so much is that the combination of Be Nice To Men social conditioning and autism can put women who are on the spectrum in really difficult situations, and none of the people who’re so worried about the poor guys who can’t help being harassers seem to give a shit about that.

Yup! Furthermore, folks who’re neuroatypical are way more likely to be victims than perps. You’d think people would be waaaaay more concerned about people taking advantage of others’ lack of social skills to victimize them, since that’s what ACTUALLY FUCKING HAPPENS.

The Kotaku guy was not being shy. Shyness would’ve meant one message at most, and then dropping off the face of the planet when he got no reply. He was ignoring every sign the other person was putting out, and hoping that it would work out if he was just persistent enough.

Bingo. I’m a fairly shy person myself, and I have never stalked a guy or harassed him, not even using the vaunted anonymity of the Internets. I’d be creeped out, not flattered, if anyone did that to me, never mind his intentions. And I would fully expect him to be creeped out if I did that, too. In fact, I’d expect precisely this kind of nasty “overreaction” that Kitty had.

Part of the reason this annoys me so much is that the combination of Be Nice To Men social conditioning and autism can put women who are on the spectrum in really difficult situations, and none of the people who’re so worried about the poor guys who can’t help being harassers seem to give a shit about that.

Or worse, it makes them into “fair game”. Because we all know that mentally ill women = Hawt Sex, right? Roosh, Fartiste, etc. tell us so…